Hops Update

We've made some good progress in our Wooster hops yard.

 Most of the plants have leaves...

...and some of the plants are just emerging now.

The construction of our trellis system has started as well!

Holes have been dug...

...and posts have been "planted".

Asian lady beetle + microsporidia = Native lady beetle death!

As we've noted before in this blog, the decline of many native lady beetle species occurring in North America and other countries coincides with the presence of the Asian lady beetle, Harmonia axyridis. The mechanisms as to why this is the case have been unclear. Is Harmonia a more effective predator than natives? Is it merely eating the natives at a particular life stage (termed intraguild predation, and the topic of Chelsea's M.S. thesis)? Does it have a faster life cycle and therefore able to reproduce in higher numbers?

A new study published today in Science reports that H. axyridis may be such an effective invasive species due to microsporidia in its hemolymph. These microsporidia are safe for their hosts, but when native species (to Europe), such as Coccinella septempunctata, were injected with these microsporidia they died. In the field, this may mean that consumption of H. axyridis eggs is lethal to intraguild competitors.

C. septempunctata is also established in the U.S., and is a dominant competitor of our own native species. It will be interesting to see how these new findings will influence our understanding of American native lady beetle declines.

Harmonia axyridis (wikipedia) 

Report in Science (paywall): http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6134/862

Science Daily article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130516142541.htm

Are you signed up for the Gardiner Lab Buckeye Lady Beetle Blitz training workshop?

Watch a Caterpillar Morph Into a Butterfly in 3-D

This is very cool!

wiredscience: butterfly metamorphosis in 3D

Hops update

The plants are starting to emerge!

 

...and the hops in the greenhouse are really starting to take off!

Hops yard progress: Rhizome planting in Wooster

Step 1: Mark the plots clearly. Rhizomes of different varieties look similar, and the last thing you want to do is mix them up. A good start is knowing exactly which varieties will go where before you even take the rhizomes out of the cooler.

Step 2: If you use landscape fabric (for weed control), burn holes with a torch.

Step 3: Grab your (well organized and labeled) rhizomes!

Step 4: Start planting! We followed the methods demonstrated in this video:

  

Step 5: Watering: Give them a generous amount of water. We gave each rhizome 1 liter, and also considered the fact that it was going to rain later in the day. Keep an eye on them; you should not let the soil dry out, but too much water can be detrimental for rhizomes you are trying to establish.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to the graduate students (Jake, Liz, and Doug) who volunteered their time to help us get the hop yard planted!

Now it's time for the waiting and watering game...many more updates to come!

Trackin' Bumbles.

Scott, Steve, and Mary have been hard at work testing the RFID tags they'll be using in the field to track bumble bees in the field this summer.

Bee with tag glued to thorax

Steve and Scott test the sensor

Keep on movin' little bee!

Mary Awarded NSF Career Grant!

Mary was awarded a NSF career grant to support her urban ecology project in Cleveland. This is very exciting for a ALE Lab, and it is a wonderful opportunity.

Project Description:

The consequences of global biodiversity decline have fueled rapid growth in biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) research. On average, a positive association among species richness (the number of species in a given area) and productivity has emerged from these experiments. However, studies examining predators indicate larger variation in richness-resource (such as prey) capture relationships. Across trophic levels, resource partitioning is considered a dominant mechanism mediating BEF patterns. Yet, for predators there is little empirical evidence that resource partitioning facilitates species richness and leads to enhanced resource capture. Without greater knowledge of the mechanisms driving predator BEF relationships, conservation of predators and their functions is difficult to achieve. Studying these processes is also challenging. Many logistical hurdles exist in documenting partitioning among predators, particularly in real-world heterogeneous landscapes. Nevertheless, discerning the effects of spatial pattern on the mechanisms and outcomes of BEF relationships will greatly advance ecosystem ecology and inform conservation.

This NSF grant will establish a large-scale field experiment to examine how the surrounding landscape influences predator resource partitioning and resource capture. 

Objective 1 tests the hypothesis that spatial heterogeneity (a mix of different land uses) facilitates resource partitioning. This objective will document how patch and landscape heterogeneity affect the dietary niche (ecological role of the organisms regarding food consumption, or in simpler terms...what do these predators eat?) overlap of five generalist predator species, as a measure of resource partitioning. The goal of this objective will be to determine if the extent of niche overlap present among this indicator community is a significant predictor of predator species richness, abundance, and resource capture. Heterogeneity-resource partitioning relationships could affect resource capture via several mechanisms. 

Objective 2 will test whether changes in heterogeneity affect resource capture via: random gain/loss in species richness, non-random gain/loss of highly effective predatory species, and/or altering the per-capita contributions of species. This objective utilizes the Extended Price Equation Partition to calculate how each of these mechanisms independently changes in response to altered patch and/or landscape heterogeneity. To inform conservation and management, it’s important to understand how these changes affect the provision of ecosystem services. 

Objective 3 will track the dispersal of predators among patches within a landscape to determine if heterogeneity affects the ability of a patch to serve as a source of biological control services.

The city of Cleveland, OH will serve as a model system to test relationships between predator richness, abundance, and function. Cleveland contains over 10,000 vacant city lots. Decisions regarding vacant land management will shape the ecological and social quality of inner-city neighborhoods for decades to come. Therefore, understanding how the composition of these habitats and their landscape context influence BEF relationships is a critical task facing ecologists. This research will take place within a network of 64 vacant lot sites assigned to one of eight plant community treatments. These treatments represent a range of available options for vacant land management and were selected through a partnership with the Cleveland City Planning Commission. The outcomes of this research will inform future green space design in Cleveland and other cities engaged or interested in vacant land management.

Objective 4: Additionally, this proposal creates significant opportunities for high school students within Cleveland and throughout the state of Ohio to conduct field ecology research by establishing the Ohio Ecological Research School Sites . This network of Environmental Science classrooms will study arthropod predator-prey relationships by conducting an experiment entitled The Prey Buffet. 

Objective 5 will also provide internships to talented Cleveland high school students to gain direct research experience in my laboratory. This program will provide experience in proposal writing and experimental design, field data collection, data analysis, and presentation of findings.         

Finally, the growth of crop production on vacant land provides important health benefits to inner-city communities lacking access to fresh produce.
Objective 6 will create the Sustainable Urban Food Production Program to address the need for urban gardener and farmer training. This OSU Master Gardener specialization program will produce a network of trained volunteers who will develop and present programs within urban communities focused on sustainable gardening and farming practices.

Congratulations Mary!